


Blue

by coughsyrup



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-20
Updated: 2012-06-20
Packaged: 2017-11-08 04:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coughsyrup/pseuds/coughsyrup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the sky is nothing but loneliness and blue, Sebastian is ground and concrete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue

Sebastian has grown used to this by now – at least, as used as he can ever be to something like Jim. Something incredible, something so very fucking unpredictable. This force of unstoppable, incoherent motion that calls itself James Moriarty. Sebastian knows him better than most. Better than anyone, he’d like to say. Sherlock Holmes is another matter entirely. Sherlock Holmes doesn’t count, in much the same way that Jim doesn’t count, because they aren’t normal, can’t be lumped together like normal people, can’t be understood or read or categorised or contained like normal people.

 

Sebastian has learnt little things about him though, little things that no one else could ever understand. Little things that have taken years of practise. Sebastian has learnt when a grin means yes or no or not now or make him scream. Sebastian has learnt – for the most part, though he slips up occasionally – when no means no, or no means yes, or no means make _me_ scream. Sometimes he’ll wake and have to fix his gun up practically from scratch because _someone_ (Jim, always Jim) has rigged it to make him hurt because _someone_ (Sebastian, only Sebastian, God, please, only him, he’s not a possessive man but...) didn’t understand that no meant blue today, and if _someone_ didn’t find the trap before shooting the gun then _someone_ didn’t deserve to live anyway.

 

He wonders if it’s sane to put his life in Jim’s hands every moment of his life (he knows it isn’t) (he’s never felt saner).

 

On some days, Jim will babble about crime or potassium or concrete or blue, and Sebastian thinks he understands. He knows he doesn’t, not really. He’ll never understand. But he knows that when Jim disappears on a Sunday, it’s more often than not to sit on the apartment roof, to be alone, to listen to Church bells and maybe throw pebbles at the congregation as they leave. Sometimes Sebastian will sit with him. Sometimes he understand. Othertimes it’s,

 

“blue, Seb. It’s all so very bloody blue. All of it.”

 

And he’s pointing to the sky, and Sebastian _wants_ to understand (so help him, God, he does) but it’s the greyest day they’ve had all year and it’s going to rain any second now.

 

Sometimes Jim talks of flying. Sebastian says, yeah, he knows the feeling, everyone dreams of flying sometimes. Jim laughs at that, says he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s not talking about flying. He doesn’t want to fly.

 

“Flying,” he explains with his head nestled against his employee like Sebastian’s stomach is a feathered pillow rather than rigid, scarred skin, “sounds ever so boring. All that sky. It’d be fun at first, of course it would. It would be new, something fantastic.”

 

He watches the sky as he talks, and it sounds as if he’s scolding a child – as if the sky is something he has within his control, within his grasp (Sebastian wouldn’t be surprised if he did), and he’s just not satisfied with the way it’s turned out.

 

“But then what do you do? When you’re up in the air. When you’re flying. It’s all just...” He sighs at that, fidgets against Sebastian’s stomach and tries to get comfy.

 

“Boring?” Sebastian supplies, while the shorter man gropes silently for a word.

 

There is a moment or two of pregnant quiet, and Sebastian wonders if Jim hasn’t been distracted again by the sound of his loyal servant’s heartbeat in his belly. He’s almost forgotten what they were talking about by the time Jim finally whispers, with eyes closed and Irish lilt poetic despite the nonsense, “blue.”

 

For all his apparent dissatisfaction, Jim continues to watch the sky.

 

He watches it from windows, from rooftops, from the dull, unremarkable tint in Sebastian’s eyes (he’ll pinch him every time he blinks, he’s trying to _concentrate_ , stop being so _useless_ ). Sebastian isn’t sure he believes him, that flying would be blue. He doesn’t think it has a colour. But he’s not James Moriarty, he’s just a human being, and perhaps he isn’t meant to see colours in actions.

 

He watches him one day, and it’s a Summer’s day in Springtime when he asks. The Sun is out of sync with the seasons and doesn’t know it’s burning too bright. Doesn’t know how to fit in, or turn darker or duller, or how to let someone look at it without burning them. He wonders, briefly, why that sounds so familiar. But Sebastian’s not cut out for poetry. There are more pressing issues at this moment, anyway. Like Johann Strauss (the second, Jim has told him, and Seb’s inclined to believe him rather than google it for himself) polluting the air with his Viennese Waltz at the decibel level of a jet plane. Jim seems content enough with the wind for a dance partner, arms around an invisible woman in an invisible ballgown, and for a moment, he almost looks like he’s capable of feeling, capable of love for this figureless creation. The music thuds loud in Sebastian’s heartbeat.

 

Jim twirls her and watches her fall from the rooftop.

 

He doesn’t step away.

 

“Flying,” he says, and Sebastian is wary now - he’s watching him carefully, or it might be the last thing he ever watches. “Flying would be so boring.”

 

“Flying,” he tells him, and Sebastian stands up, he doesn’t care how Jim’s reading him, he doesn’t care if he’ll find traps in his guns for the rest of his life, “would just be blue and blue and blue. Forever. Just blue.”

 

“Flying,” he sighs, and his arms are raising up like wings and his eyes are closed and there’s wistfulness in his voice and a smile on his teeth and lips and tongue, and Sebastian steps to the edge with him. “I would hate to fly, Sebastian. Wouldn’t you?”

 

Sebastian murmurs his assent. He has never been a poet.

 

“Now falling, I could get behind that.”

 

Sebastian takes his wrists and pulls him back. He doesn’t expect Jim to let himself be moved – but then again, he’s never really pretended to understand the man completely.

 

He’s mumbling now, talking about dew on grass and blood on concrete – he’s reciting something that sounds like it could be a poem but Sebastian isn’t listening. He picks the Irishman up like he’s made of nothing but hollow bones and feathers and Jim is limp in his arms.

 

When the sky is nothing but loneliness and blue, Sebastian is ground and concrete. And he suffices, which nothing else has ever done. It is not a permanent solution, they both know that much. But it suffices.


End file.
